Dirty burgers, fixies and vintage Wranglers come to Albert Square as EastEnders vacates its Eighties time-warp for cooler climes
Interior: The Queen Vic pub at lunchtime. Mick Carter is serving Ian Beale.
Mick: There you go: two flat whites and an organic small-batch lemonade. We’ll get yer that avocado on toast and the Middle Eastern tasting plate in a jiffy. There’s unfiltered tap water and rosemary sourdough bread on the table and the wi-fi password’s “hipstermick”. Sure I can’t tempt yer to an artisanal chorizo scotch egg while yer waiting?
Ian: Nah, mate (pats stomach). Just got this vintage pair of skinny Wranglers off eBay so gotta watch me waistline. Specially now TJ’s taken me fixie in the workshop to give it a bare-metal blast and a powdercoat respray.
Mick: Seventies Bianchi frame with deep rims, innit? Sweet. You around Saturday? Johnny’s ’avin’ a club night to raise money for the Terrence Higgins Trust. We’re gonna have cocktails and a chichetti menu, play some vintage vinyl …
Ian: Sorry, mate, Saturday I’m discussing turning the café into a techno-hub for small start-ups with Lucy. I’ve got a job-lot of jam jars for your cocktails, if you wannem, though, in the back of me Prius.
Mick’s dad Stan snorts in derision.
Stan: Bloody chichetti? What’s wrong with a dirty burger or a Vietnamese banh mi, eh? If you ask me, this area went to the dogs the moment they turned the market into a Boxpark made of shipping containers.
At another table, Shabnam is talking to Masood.
Shabnam: Thing is, dad, I don’t think pharmacy is really for me. When Phil and Sharon left to open their Bikram retreat in the Dordogne, I realised it is possible to follow your dreams, so I wanna launch a sustainable organic fashion range for modern Muslim girls, Mipsters …
Masood sighs. Cut to Dot and Bianca outside the site of the laundrette, where an iconic tower of luxury apartments and an art gallery is being built.
Dot: Thing is, even if I sell all me old work tabards to that vintage boutique in Canning Town, it’ll barely keep me in e-Lites. I’m afraid us original East End characters are gonna be forced out by a tide of hipster gentrification.
Bianca: Cheer up, love, it might never ’appen.
TJ walks by, sporting a beard and a topknot, a waistcoat and jodhpurs, and brandishing an iPhone.
TJ: That’s brilliant. Mind if I tweet it?
Bianca: Oh.
